Welcome to the Charles C.W. Cook podcast, episode nine, Thanksgiving edition.

I am back on dry land once again, as Elton John once sang.

And if you're listening to this, tomorrow is Thanksgiving.

And actually, if you're not listening to this, tomorrow is also Thanksgiving,

because I'm not in control of that, alas.

I often start these shows by talking about something that has annoyed me,

or that I think is disastrously wrong with the world.

But today I'm not going to do that.

Instead, I want to stay within the tradition of the holiday

and talk a bit about what I'm thankful for,

which, well, first off, I'm thankful to be alive now. What an amazing, extraordinary

world we live in. We have heating, air conditioning, running water, planes, automobiles,

not trains, let's not get carried away. We have all of human knowledge

at our fingertips on a device that also serves as a camera and a scanner and a telephone and a GPS

device and a games console and a telegraph machine and a TV. I can go to the shop across the road

and buy wine from 20 different countries. I can buy fresh vegetables and fruit irrespective of

the time of year. I can buy a hundred different types of fish. I can ride

roller coasters that cost tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars and that were built for no

other purpose than to throw me around safely. I can find out in seconds what's wrong with my water heater if it breaks.

And if I can follow along with one of the many videos that helpful people have posted online for free,

I can fix it myself.

Now, I could have been born in Sparta in 400 BC. I could have been born in the Scottish

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